OM Jones would like to be married. Tom does not quite relish the idea of a connubial idiot; and yet, for many reasons unnecessary to state, he does not desire a wife who knows much. He would like one who will be always on tiptoe to await his coming, and yet be perfectly satisfied, and good-humored, if after all her preparations, culinary and otherwise, he may conclude at all times, or at any time, to prefer other society to hers. He also desires his wife to be possessed of principle enough for both, because in his own case, principle would interfere with many of his little arrangements. He would like her always to be very nicely dressed, although his own boots and coats are innocent of a brush from year's end to year's end. He wishes her to speak low, and not speak much; because he has a great deal to say himself, and when he has roared it out, like the liberal, great Dr. Johnson, "he wishes the subject ended!" Tom wishes his wife possessed of military instincts, so that she may discipline her household; after that is done, he wishes to turn the key on these military instincts, lest they might be of use in some emergency necessary to her personal happiness. Tom wants a wife who loves more than she reasons, because he intends himself to pursue quite a contrary policy. Tom would like a wife who adjusts everything with a smile; although he may use his boots for other purposes than that of locomotion. She must have a pretty face, an easy temper, and an intellect the size of which would allow him to consider his own colossal. Any young lady very weak in the head, and strong in the nerves, and quite destitute of any disgusting little selfishnesses, may consider herself eligible, provided she has money; none others need apply.
Since the world began, there probably never was a marriage of which somebody did not "disapprove." That somebody, and everybody, including relatives, have a perfect right to an opinion on such a subject, nobody doubts. But how far you prove your greater love for "Tom," by whispering round "confidentially" your foreordained determination not to believe that "that woman" can ever make him happy, is a question. Poor fellow! and she of all people in the world; the very last woman you would have selected; which of course is sure to get to Tom's wife's ears, and produce a fine foundation for belief in the reality of your regard for him, and your good nature generally.
Now as there were seldom, or never, two parties bound together in any relation of life, whether as business partners, pastor and people, teacher and pupil, master and subordinate, mistress and maid, who always moved along with perfect unanimity, it is hardly to be expected that the marriage of "Tom" and his wife will effect a total revolution for the better in human nature, any more than did your own marriage. Perhaps even Tom and his wife, though loving each other very much, may have a difference of opinion on some subject; but what is that to you? They don't need your guardianship or supervision in the matter. It is very curious that those persons who clamor most loudly when "Tom" marries without their consent and approbation, are, ten to one, those who have themselves married clandestinely, or otherwise offended against the rigid rule which they would apply in his particular case.
Broad philanthropists! Tom can surely be happy in no way but theirs. They love him so much better than "that woman" possibly can. Poor "Tom!" He looked so poorly last time they saw him. Her fault, of course. They knew it would be just so. Didn't they say so from the first? Poor Tom! such a sacrifice! It is unaccountable how he can like her. For the matter of that, they never will believe he does, (and they might add, he shan't if we can help it.) And so, when they see him, they inquire with a churchyard air, "Is he well?" "Is anything the matter?" "Ah, you needn't tell us; we know how it is; poor Tom—we know you try to bear up under it. Come and see us. We will love you. You never will find us changed."
No. That's the worst of it! No hope of their changing. Bless their souls! How lucky "Tom" has somebody to tell him what a "sacrifice he has made," or he never would find it out! Well, it is astonishing that such people don't see that this is the last way to convince any person with common sense, that they are better qualified to be installed guardians of "Tom's" happiness than "that woman."
It is very strange that men, as a general thing, should be proud of that, of which they should be ashamed, and ashamed of that, which ennobles them. Now, to my eye, a man never looks so grand, as when he bends his ear patiently and lovingly, to the lisping of a little child. I admire that man whom I see with a baby in his arms. I delight, on Sunday, when the nurses are set free, to see the fathers leading out their little ones in their best attire, and setting them right end up, about fifty times a minute. It is as good a means of grace as I am acquainted with. Now that a man should feel ashamed to be seen doing this, or think it necessary to apologize, even jocularly, when he meets a male friend, is to me one of the unaccountable things. It seems to me every way such a lovely, and good, and proper action in a father, that I can't help thinking that he who would feel otherwise, is of so coarse and ignoble a nature, as to be quite unworthy of respect. How many times I have turned to look at the clumsy smoothing of a child's dress, or settling of its hat, or bonnet, by the unpractised fingers of a proud father. And the clumsier he was about it, the better I have loved him for the pains he took. It is very beautiful to me, this self-abnegation, which creeps so gradually over a young father. He is himself so unconscious that he, who had for many years thought first and only of his own selfish ease and wants, is forgetting himself entirely whenever that little creature, with his eyes and its mother's lips, reaches out coaxing hands to go here or there, or to look at this or that pretty object. Ah, what but this heavenly love, could bridge over the anxious days and nights, of care and sickness, that these twain of one flesh are called to bear? My boy! My girl! There it is! Mine! Something to live for—something to work for—something to come home to; and that last is the summing up of the whole matter. "Now let us have a good love," said a little three-year older, as she clasped her chubby arms about her father's neck when he came in at night "Now let us have a good love." Do you suppose that man walked with slow and laggard steps from his store toward that bright face that had been peeping for an hour from the nursery window to watch his coming? Do you suppose when he got on all fours to "play elephant" with the child, that it even crossed his mind that he had worked very hard all that day, or that he was not at that minute "looking dignified?" Did he wish he had a "club" where he could get away from home evenings, or was that "good love" of the little creature on his back, with the laughing eyes and the pearly teeth, and the warm clasp about his neck, which she was squeezing to suffocation, sweeter and better than anything that this world could give?
Something to come home to! That is what saves a man. Somebody there to grieve if he is not true to himself. Somebody there to be sorry if he is troubled or sick. Somebody there, with fingers like sunbeams, gliding and brightening whatever they touch; and all for him. I look at the business men of New York, at nightfall, coming swarming "up town" from their stores and counting-rooms; and when I see them, as I often do, stop and buy one of those tiny bouquets as they go, I smile to myself; for although it is a little attention toward a wife, I know how happy that rose with its two geranium leaves, and its sprig of mignonette will make her. He thought of her coming home! Foolish, do you call it? Such folly makes all the difference between stepping off, scarcely conscious of the cares a woman carries, or staggering wearily along till she faints disheartened under their burthen. Something to go home to! That man felt it, and by ever so slight a token wished to recognize it. God bless him, I say, and all like him, who do not take home-comforts as stereotyped matters of course, and God bless the family estate; I can't see that anything better has been devised by the wiseacres who have experimented on the Almighty's plans. "There comes my father!" exclaims Johnny, bounding from out a group of "fellows" with whom he was playing ball; and sliding his little soiled fist in his, they go up the steps and into the house together; and again God bless them! I say there's one man who is all right at least. That boy has got him, safer than Fort Lafeyette.
If there is an experiment which is worse than any other for a young married couple to make, we believe it to be that of trying to make a home in a hotel. What possible chance has a young wife there to acquire domestic habits? To do anything, in short, but dress half a dozen times a day, and sit in the public parlor, or her own, to gossip with idle women or bandy compliments with idle men. And how—I ask any thinking person—can a young married woman be fitted for quiet home-cares and duties, after a year or two of such idleness and vacuity; Let no young husband expect any favorable result from such an experiment. Better a house with only one room, in a quiet place by yourselves—than such a hollow, shallow life as this. Many a husband has dated from it the loss of all quiet, home happiness; lucky for him, if no more. Go to housekeeping; unambitiously if need be—as the old folks did before you. But have a place sacred to yourselves—have a place which your children in after years will love to think of as home. Do it for their sakes if not for your own. No sight is sadder than that of a weary little one—wandering up and down the entries and halls of a large hotel, peeping into parlors, offices and bar-rooms—listening to what childhood should never hear, and with no alternative but the small, dreary nursery, whose only-window prospect, nine times in ten, is a stack of brick chimneys or a back-shed full of flapping clothes hung out to dry. A father should hesitate long before he dooms a young child to such a "home" as this.
As to women, men are apt to think, and fall into innumerable blunders by so thinking, that because they know one woman they know all; when, in fact, each woman is as much of a study as if he had never seen one of the sex. Bulwer doubts whether man ever thoroughly understood woman. Truly, how should he? when woman does not understand herself; nor can tell why she lives on patiently, hopefully, year after year, with a brute, whose favorite pastime consists in attempts to break her neck every time things go wrong with him, indoors or out. That the better educated husband murders with sharp words instead of sharp blows, makes it none the less murder. The only difference is in the duration of the misery, one being as deadly as the other. Who cares to understand how a woman with bruised heart and flesh can throw over both the charitable mantle that, "he wasn't himself;" and beg off the offender from merited punishment, public or private. Let us rather seek to understand how man, who should be so strong, should fall so immeasurably below his "weaker" self, in the difficult lesson of self-control and forgiveness of injuries.
Some men profess to dislike coquetry; if so, why do they encourage it? Why do they often leave a sensible, well-informed woman to play "wall-flower," while they talk nonsense to some brainless doll, who can only ogle, sigh and simper? It appears to us that men are to blame for most of the faults of women. We always regret to hear a man who has matrimonial views say of a girl, she don't know much, but she is amiable, has a pretty face, and after all, if I need society, it is easy enough to find it elsewhere. A man has no right to marry a woman with intentions so widely diverse from those he professes to entertain, when he vows to be a husband; he is responsibly blameworthy for the consequences that result from such an act; besides, it is a very mistaken notion some men seem to have, that a fool is easily managed; there is no description of animal so difficult to govern; what they lack in brains they are sure to make up in obstinacy, or a low kind of cunning. Then a pretty face cannot last forever, and the old age of a brainless beauty, we shudder to contemplate, even at a distance. Women aim to be what men oftenest like to see them; you may, therefore, easily gauge the masculine standard by the majority of women one daily meets. Heaven pity the exceptions! they must find their mates in another world than this.
One of the meanest things a young man can do, and it is not at all of uncommon occurrence, is to monopolize the time, and attention, of a young girl for a year, or more, without any definite object, and to the exclusion of other gentlemen, who, supposing him to have matrimonial intentions, absent themselves from her society. This selfish "dog-in-the-manger" way of proceeding should be discountenanced and forbidden, by all parents and guardians.
It prevents the reception of eligible offers of marriage, and fastens upon the young lady, when the acquaintance is finally dissolved, the unenviable and unmerited appellation of "flirt." Young man, let all your dealings with women, be frank, honest and noble. That many whose education and position in life are culpably criminal on these points, is no excuse for your short-comings. It adds a blacker dye to your meanness, that woman is often wronged through her holiest feelings. One rule is always safe: Treat every woman you meet, as you would wish another man to treat your innocent, confiding sister.
After all, how any young fellow can have the face to walk into your family, and deliberately ask for one of your daughters, astonishes me. That it is done every day, does not lessen my amazement at the sublime impudence of the thing. There you have been, sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen years of her life, combing her hair, and washing her face for——him. It is lucky the thought never strikes you while you are doing it, that this is to be the end of it all. What if you were married yourself? that is no reason why she should be bewitched away into a separate establishment, just as you begin to lean upon her, and be proud of her; or, at least, it stands to reason, that after you have worried her through the measles, and chicken-pox, and scarlet-fever, and whooping-cough, and had her properly baptized and vaccinated, this young man might give you a short breathing-spell before she goes.
He seems to be of a different opinion; he not only insists upon taking her, but upon taking her immediately. He talks well about it—very well; you have no objection to him, not the least in the world except that. When the world is full of girls, why couldn't he have fixed his eye on the daughter of somebody else? There are some parents who are glad to be rid of their daughters. Blue eyes are as plenty as blueberries; why need it be this particular pair? Isn't she happy enough as she is? Don't she have meat and bread and clothes enough, to say nothing of love? What is the use of leaving a certainty for an uncertainty, when that certainty is a mother, and you can never have but one? You put all these questions to her, and she has the sauciness to ask, if that is the way you reasoned, when her father came for you. You disdain to answer, of course; it is a mean dodging of the question. But she gets round you for all that, and so does he too, though you try your best not to like him; and with a—"well, if I must, I must," you just order her wedding-clothes, muttering to yourself the while,—"dear—dear—what sort of a fist will that child make at the head of a house? how will she ever know what to do in this, that, or the other emergency"—she who is calling on "mother" fifty times a day to settle every trifling question? What folly for her to set up house for herself! How many mothers have had these foreboding thoughts over a daughter's wedding-clothes; and yet that daughter has met life, and its unexpected reverses, with a heroism and courage as undaunted as if every girlish tear had not been kissed away by lips, that alas! may be dust, when this baptism of womanhood comes upon her.
In my opinion, the "coming" woman's Alpha and Omega will not be matrimony. She will not of necessity sour into a pink-nosed old maid, or throw herself at any rickety old shell of humanity, whose clothes are as much out of repair as his morals. No, the future man will have to "step lively;" this wife is not to be had for the whistling. He will have a long canter round the pasture for her, and then she will leap the fence and leave him limping on the ground. Thick-soled boots and skating are coming in, and "nerves," novels and sentiment (by consequence) are going out. The coming woman, as I see her, is not to throw aside her needle; neither is she to sit embroidering worsted dogs and cats, or singing doubtful love ditties, and rolling up her eyes to "the chaste moon."
Heaven forbid she should stamp round with a cigar in her mouth, elbowing her neighbors, and puffing smoke in their faces; or stand on the free-love platform, public or private—call it by what specious name you will—wooing men who, low as they may have sunk in their own self-respect, would die before they would introduce her to the unsullied sister who shared their cradle.
Heaven forbid the coming woman should not have warm blood in her veins, quick to rush to her cheek, or tingle at her fingers' ends when her heart is astir. No, the coming woman shall be no cold, angular, flat-chested, narrow-shouldered, sharp-visaged Betsey, but she shall be a bright-eyed, full-chested, broad-shouldered, large-souled, intellectual being; able to walk, able to eat, able to fulfill her maternal destiny, and able—if it so please God—to go to her grave happy, self-poised and serene, though unwedded.
We often think of the solitariness and isolation of the young man—a stranger in a crowded city; suddenly cut adrift, perhaps from loving home influences—finding an inexorable necessity in his nature for sympathy and companionship—returning at night, when his day's toil is done, to his dreary, cell-like room, or, if he go out, solicited by myriad treacherous voices to unlearn the holy lessons taught at his mother's knee—solicited to show his "manliness" by drinking with every acquaintance that chance or the devil may send. That youth must needs be strongly intrenched in the true idea of "manliness" not to waver and turn aside from his own independent course of well-doing. Alas! that to so many the fear of ridicule, or dread of "oddity," should have power to draw a veil over the swift and sure downfall of the drunkard or profligate. Alas! that the little word No should be so impossible of articulation—in a circle, too, whose sneering condemnation of it were not worth a thought, no matter how brilliantly the jest or the song may issue from lips foul with the sophistry of "free-love;" than which freedom nothing is more shackled with disgust and pain; for try as we will, God's image, though marred, shall never be wholly effaced: enough shall be left in every man's and woman's soul to protest against such desecration, though it voice itself, as it often does, in bitter denunciation of what the soul knows to be its only true happiness. The holy stars make no record of the gasping sigh, brief but intense, that their purity has evoked. The little bird trills out its matins, and vespers, all unconscious that their sweetness forces the unwelcome tear from some world-sated eye. Bless God, these moments will and do come to the most reckless—these swift heralds of our immortality—to be silenced never in this world; if disregarded, to be mourned over forever in the next; for the fiercest theologian's idea of "hell" can never, it seems to me, go beyond the consciousness of god-like powers wasted and debased—noble opportunities of benefiting our race defiling past the memory in mournful procession, and the sorrowing soul nerveless, powerless to bid them stay.
To every young man entering the lists against the vices of a crowded city, at such fearful odds, we would say: cultivate an acquaintance, as soon as possible, with some family, or families, whose healthful influence may be your talisman against evil associations, whose good opinion may give an impetus to your self-respect, and whose cheerful fireside may outshine the ignis-fatuus lights which dazzle but to mislead. To those who see difficulties or impossibilities in this, we would suggest the cultivation of a taste for reading, which surely may be compassed in a city, even by a young person of slender means. Good books are safe, pleasant and economical company. The time spent with them is an investment which will not fail to yield a satisfying interest for all future time. Let those who will—and their name, we fear, is legion—wreck health and reputation, for the lack of courage or desire to be true to their better feelings; let those who will, cover their inclination to do evil with the transparent excuse "that it is well to see life in all its phases." As well might a perfectly healthy person from mere curiosity breathe the tainted air of every pest-house in the country. No thanks are due to his fool-hardy temerity if he escape; "served him right!" would be the unanimous verdict of common sense if he should not.
To him who, eschewing such unwisdom, chooses to breathe a healthful, moral atmosphere, it may be a reflection worth having, that he will bring to his future home a constitution and principles as sound as those he so properly requires in the wife of his choice and the mother of his children; and I confess myself unable to see why this should be more necessary in the case of one parent than in that of the other. Such men, and such only, have a call to be husbands.
HAT constitutes a handsome man? Well—there must be enough of him; or, failing in that, but, come to think of it, he mustn't fail in that, because there can be no beauty without health, or at least, according to my way of thinking. In the second place, he must have a beard; whiskers—as the gods please, but a beard I insist upon, else one might as well look at a girl. Let his voice have a dash of Niagara, with the music of a baby's laugh in it. Let his smile be like the breaking forth of the sunshine on a spring morning. As to his figure, it should be strong enough to contend with a man, and slight enough to tremble in the presence of the woman he loves. Of course, if he is a well made man, it follows that he must be graceful, on the principle that perfect machinery always moves harmoniously; therefore you and himself and the milk pitcher, are safe elbow neighbors at the tea-table. This style of handsome man would no more think of carrying a cane, than he would use a parasol to keep the sun out of his eyes. He can wear gloves, or warm his hands in his breast pockets, as he pleases. He can even commit the suicidal-beauty-act of turning his outside coat-collar up over his ears of a stormy day, with perfect impunity;—the tailor didn't make him, and as to his hatter, if he depended on this handsome man's patronage of the "latest spring style," I fear he would die of hope deferred; and yet—by Apollo! what a bow he makes, and what an expressive adieu he can wave with his head! For all this he is not conceited—for he hath brains.
But your conventional "handsome man," of the barber's-window-wax-figure-head-pattern; with a pet lock in the middle of his forehead, an apple-sized head, and a raspberry moustache with six hairs in it; a pink spot in its cheek, and a little dot of a "goatee" on its cunning little chin; with pretty blinking little studs in its shirt bosom, and a neck-tie that looks as if he would faint were it tumbled, I'd as lief look at a poodle. I always feel a desire to nip it up with a pair of sugar-tongs, drop it gently into a bowl of cream, and strew pink rose-leaves over its little remains.
After all, when soul magnetizes soul, the question of beauty is a dead letter. Whom one loves is always handsome, the world's arbitrary rules notwithstanding; therefore when you say "what can the handsome Mr. Smith see to admire in that stick of a Miss Jones?" or, "what can the pretty Miss T. see to like in that homely Mr. Johns?" you simply talk nonsense—as you generally do, on such subjects. Still the parson gets his fees, and the census goes on all the same.
I wonder why people decry a masculine blush: I don't know. I immediately love the man who blushes. I am sure that he is unhackneyed; that he has not a set of meaningless, cut and dried compliments on hand, for every woman he meets; that he has not learned to sniff at sacred things, or prate transcendentally about "affinities" or any other corruption under a new-fangled name. I know that his love will be worth a pure woman's having; that he will not be ashamed of liking home, or his baby, or laughed out of staying in it in preference to any other place. I know that when he stops at a hotel, his first business will not be to hold a private conference with the cook, to tell him how he likes an omelette made. I know that in his conversation he will not pride himself upon the small fopperies of talk, in the way of pronunciation and newly coined words, to show how well he is posted up in dictionary matters. I know that he will not be closeted two thirds of his time with his tailor; or think it fine to be continually quoting some dead-and-gone book, known only to some resurrectionist of scarce authors. I know he will not sit in grimstarched statuesqueness in a car, when a woman old enough to be his mother, is standing wearily in front of him, swaying to and fro with the motion of the vehicle. In short, I know that he is not a petrifaction; that there's human nature in him, and plenty of it; that he is not like an animal under an exhausted receiver, having form only—in whom there is no spring, nor elasticity, nor breath of life.
A fool, hey? No, sir—not necessarily a fool neither. The fool is he who, not yet at life's meridian, has exhausted it and himself; who thinks every man "green" who has not taken his diploma in wickedness. For whom existence is as weary as a thrice-told tale. Who has crowded four-score years into twenty, or less; and has nothing left for it but to sneer at the healthy, simple, pure, fresh joys which may never come again to his vitiated palate.
Very likely you have met him: this blasé man, who, though yet at life's meridian, has squeezed life as dry as an orange. Who has seen everything, heard everything, ate everything, drank everything, traveled everywhere, but into his own heart, to see its utter selfishness. Who is willing, upon the whole, to tolerate his fellow-creatures, provided they don't speak to him when he wants to be silent, or annoy him by peculiarities of dress, manner and conversation. Who remains immovably grave when everybody else laughs, and smiles when everybody else looks grave; who lifts his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders dissentingly, when people who have not like him "been abroad," applaud. Who talks knowingly and mystically of "art," and thinks it fine to showerbath everybody's enthusiasm with "to-l-e-r-a-b-l-e." Who goes to church occasionally, but owing to the prevalence of badly-fitting coats and vests in the assembly, is unable to attend to the service; who don't care much what a man's creed is, provided he only takes it mild. He likes to see a woman plump and well-made, but abhors the idea of her eating; likes to see her rosy, but can't abide an india-rubber on her foot, even in the most consumptive-breeding weather; thinks it would be well were she domestic when he considers his tea and coffee, but don't believe in aprons and calico. Thinks she should be religious, because it would be a check-rein upon her tongue when his liver is out of order; and keep her true to him when he leaves her with all her yearning affections, to take care of herself.
And so our blasé man yawns away existence, everything outward and inward tending only to the great central I, when life might be so glorious, so bright, would he only recognize the existence of others. For how much is that education valuable, the result of which is only this? For how much that refinement which lifts a man so high in the clouds, that no cry of humanity, be it ever so sharp and piercing, can reach him? I turn away from his face, on which ennui and selfishness have ploughed such furrows of discontent, to the laborer in his red flannel shirt-sleeves, who, returning at sunset, dinner-pail in hand, has well earned the right to clasp in his arms the little child who runs to meet him. He may be illiterate, he may be uneducated, but he is a man; and by that beautiful retributive law of our being, by which the most useful and unselfish shall be the healthiest, and happiest, he has his reward.
HE verdant have an idea, that literary people are always under the influence of "the divine afflatus;" but, like the curious female who gazed through the bars of the doomed man's cell to gloat over his situation, and was told by her victim, that, although the gallows was impending, "he couldn't cry all the time," they are doomed to disappointment.
When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he wishes to do is to talk book. The last person he wishes to meet is another unfortunate, who also has been cudgelling his brains for ideas. The person whom he wishes to see most, if, indeed, he desire to see anybody, is one who will stir up his mentality least. The laurel-wreath, which the verdant suppose he settles carefully and becomingly on his head, before the looking-glass, ere he goes forth, he would be glad to toss into the first ash-barrel; and, so far from desiring to regulate his personal appearance, according to the programme marked out by the sentimental, he feels only an insane desire to be let severely alone, and "let Natur caper," if, indeed, she has not forgotten how.
He wants—this wise man—to hear some merry little child sing:
Or he wants to lean over a fence and see the turnips grow. It rests him to think that the fat, lazy pigs never think, but lie winking their pink eyes forever at the sun. In short, as I told you, he wants just the antipodes of himself.
The sentimental will perceive, from this, the small chance they stand for edification, or amusement, from "literary people" when off duty. Blithe ladies will see, how very jolly it must be to marry a poet or an author. But what shall we say of "the situation" when a literary man and a literary woman are yoked? When the world abroad demands the best of each, and nothing is left for home consumption? When, instead of writing sonnets to each other, and looking at the chaste moon in their leisure moments, as the sentimental have arranged it, they are too used up to do anything but gape? When a change of programme would not only be a blessing, but absolutely necessary, to stave off a Coroner's Inquest? When the sight of a book to either, is like water to a mad dog: particularly the sight of their own books, which represent such an amount of headache, and bother, and sleepless nights, to enable a critic to notice only a printer's mistake in a date, which is generally set down to the author's "want of knowledge of his subject?" When they wonder, in the rasped state of their nerves, what life is worth, if it is to be forever pitched up to that key? When they can't open their mouths on any subject, without perversely saying everything they don't mean, and nothing that they do?
Ah! then is the time for them to catch sight of that athlete—the day-laborer, in red flannel shirt-sleeves, whistling along home with his tools. Do you hear? Tools! Happy man! He won't have to manufacture his tools before he begins to-morrow's work. He can pound away all day, and sing the while, and no organ-grinder has power to drive him mad.
It is a difficult thing for literary people, as well as others, to tell the truth sometimes. Now here is a letter containing an article by which the writer hopes to make money; and of which my "candid opinion is asked, as soon as convenient."
Now in the first place, the article is most illegibly written; an objection sufficient to condemn it at once, with a hurried editor—and all editors are hurried—beside having always a bushel basket full of MSS. already in hand to look over. In the second place, the spelling is wofully at fault. In the third place, the punctuation is altogether missing. In the fourth place, if all these things were amended, the article itself is tame, common-place, and badly expressed. Now that is my "candid opinion" of it.
Still, I am not verdant enough to believe that the writer wished my "candid opinion" were it so condemnatory as this; and should I give it, there is great danger it would be misconstrued. The author, in his wounded self-love, might say, that, being a writer myself, I was not disposed to be impartial. Or he might go farther and say that I had probably forgotten the time when I commenced writing, and longed for an appreciative or encouraging word myself. Now this would pain me very much; it would also be very unjust; because when I began to write I called that person my best and truest friend who dared tell me when I was at fault in such matters. I have now in my remembrance a stranger, who often wrote me, regarding my articles, as they appeared from time to time; who criticised them unsparingly; finding fault in the plainest Saxon when he could not approve or praise. I thanked him then, I do so now; and was gratified at the singular interest he manifested in one unknown to him. I have never seen him all these years of my literary effort; but I know him to have been more truly my friend than they who would flatter me into believing better of what talent I may possess than it really merits.
This is the way I felt about friendly though unfavorable criticism. The question is, have I sufficient courage to risk being misunderstood, should I, in this instance, speak honestly and plainly. Or shall I write a very polite, non-committal answer, meaning anything, or nothing. Or shall I praise it unqualifiedly, and recommend the writer to persevere in a vocation in which I am sure he is certain to be doomed to disappointment; and all for the sake of being thought a generous, genial, kindly, sympathetic sort of person.
Which shall I do?
The writer would not like to descend from his pedestal, and hear that he must begin at the foot of the ladder, and first of all, learn to spell correctly, before he can write. And that after words, must come thoughts; and that after thoughts, must come the felicitous expression of thoughts. And that, after all that, he must then look about for a market for the same.
This, you see, is a tedious process to one who wants not only immediate but large pecuniary results, and evidently considers himself entitled to them, notwithstanding his deference to your "candid opinion."
But what a pleasure, when the person appealed to, can conscientiously say to a writer, that he has not over but under-rated his gifts! What a pleasure, if one's opinion can be of any value to him, to be able to speak encouragingly of the present, and hopefully for the future. And surely, he who has himself waded through this initiatory "Slough of Despond," and, by one chance in a thousand, landed safely on the other side, should be the last to beckon, or lure into it, those whose careless steps, struggle they ever so blindly, may never find sure or permanent foot-hold.
"What did I do, after all, about that letter?" Well, if you insist upon cornering me, it lies unanswered on my desk, this minute: a staring monument of the moral cowardice of Fanny Fern.
HIEF of all sublunary abominations is the slatternly woman. I blame no man for longing to rush from a house, the mistress of which, habitually, and from choice, pays him the poor compliment of pouring out his coffee in curl-papers, or tumbled hair, or dingy, collarless morning gown, and slip-shod feet. If there is a time when a pretty woman looks prettier than at any hour in the twenty-four, it is in a neat breakfast toilette, with her shining bands of hair, and nice breakfast robe, (calico, if you like, provided it fit well, and the color be well chosen); and if there is a time when a plain woman comes the nearest to being handsome, it is in this same lovable, domestic dress.
I will maintain that the coffee and eggs taste better, and that the husband goes more smilingly and hopefully to his day's task, after helping such a wife to bread and butter. I could never comprehend the female slattern—thank heaven there are few of them—or understand how a woman, though she had no eye to please but her own, should not be scrupulously neat in all the different strata of her apparel.
I repeat it, I blame no man from rushing in disgust from a house whose mistress is a slattern; who never pays her husband the compliment to look decent in her person or in her house, unless company is expected; who reserves her yawns and old dresses for her husband, and strikes an attitude for his male friends; whose pretty carpets are defaced with spots; whose chairs are half dusted; whose domestic dinners are uneatable; whose table-cloth, castors, and salt-cellars are seldom regenerated; and whose muslins look as if they had been dipped in saffron.
Not to speak of the wastefulness of this crying fault: bonnets, shawls and cloaks will not long retain their beauty if left on chairs or tables over night, instead of being carefully put away; bracelets and brooches are not improved by being trodden upon, or ribbons and laces by being hastily wisped into a corner. To such an extreme do I carry my horror of an untidy woman, that I would almost refuse to believe in the virtue of such an one. Not that I admire the woman who is always at her husband's heels with a brush and a dust-pan; who puts him under the harrow if he does not place his boots under the scraper before entering the parlor; who has fits if his coat is not hung up on the left side of the door instead of the right; who when he has but ten minutes to spare after breakfast to enjoy the morning paper, drives him out of his comfortable corner by the fire, to brush up a spoonful of ashes on the hearth; who is always "righting," as she calls it, his own particular den, which I am convinced all husbands must be allowed to enjoy, neck deep in confusion unmolested, if their wives wish the roof to stay on.
I once had the misfortune to live in the house with such a female, whose husband roosted half his in-door time on the top of the table, to keep clear of the mop. How her cap-strings flew through the doors; what galvanized broomsticks she wielded; how remorselessly she ferreted out closets, and disembowelled cupboards; how horribly she scraped glass and paint; and how anxious she looked to begin again when it was all done. How I slunk behind doors, and dodged behind screens, and jumped out of windows, to get out of the vixen's way; and how I sat swinging in the elm tree in the orchard at a safe distance till the whirlwind was past.
Heavens; how that india-rubber woman would go to baking after she had done cleaning, and to ironing after she had done baking, and to sewing after she had done both; how vindictively she twitched her needle through, as if she wished it were some live thing, that she might make it feel weariness and pain. How like whipped spaniels her children looked; and what a reverence they had for washing and ironing days; how remorselessly she scrubbed their noses up and down of a Sunday morning, and shoved them into their "meetin clothes," turning the pockets carefully inside out, to see that no stray bit of string, or carnal marble, or fish-hook remained, to alleviate the torture of the long-drawn seventeenthlies of the parson's impracticable discourse.
Still this female gave her husband light bread to eat; his coffee and tea were always strong and hot; he might have shaved himself by the polish of the parlor table; his buttons were on his shirts, and his stockings always mended; but the man—and he was human—might as well have laid his night-cap beside a sewing-machine. And oh, the weary details of roasting, baking and broiling to which he was compelled to listen and approve between the pauses. The messes, which in any other female hands but hers, would inevitably have stewed over or burnt up or evaporated. The treasure he had in her, culinarily and pecuniarily, though he didn't know it!
What I want to know is this:
Must a model housekeeper always have thin lips, thick ankles, a bolster-figure, and a fist like an overgrown beet? Need she take hold of her children as if total depravity were bristling out of every hair of their heads? Need the unhappy cat always take its tail under its arm and creep into the ash-hole whenever she looks at it? Is a sweet temper foreordained to be incompatible with sweet cupboards? Would it be unchristian to strangle such women with their own garters?
I pause for a reply.
I don't like to admit it, but there are two things a woman can't do. First, she can't sharpen a lead pencil. Give her one and see. Mark how jaggedly she hacks away every particle of wood from the lead, leaving a spike of the latter, which breaks as soon as you try to use it. You can almost forgive the male creature his compassionate contempt, as chucking her under the chin, he twitches it from her awkward little paw, and rounds, and tapers it off in the most ravishing manner, for durable use. * * * * * * *
Last week a philanthropist (need I say a male philanthropist) knowing my weakness, presented me with a two-cent-sharp-pointed-lead-pencil. My dreams that night were peaceful. I awoke like a strong-minded woman to run a race. I sat down to my desk. I might have known it; "I never loved a tree or flower," etc. Some fiend had "borrowed" it. Oh the misery that may be contained in that word "borrowed." When you are in a hurry; when the "devil" is waiting in the basement, stamping his feet to get back to the printing-office; when you've nothing but a miserable little "chunky"-old-worn-out-stub of an inch long lead pencil to make your "stet"-s and "d"-s. Shade of Ben Franklin! shall I, before I "shuffle off this mortal coil"—though I don't know what that is,—ever own another two-cent sharp-pointed-lead-pencil?
I have said that there are two things a woman can't do. I have mentioned one. I wish to hear no argument on that point, because when I once make up my mind "all the king's men" can't change it. Well, then—Secondly: A woman can't do up a bundle. She takes a whole newspaper to wrap up a paper of pins, and a coil of rope to tie it, and then it comes unfastened. When I go shopping, which it is sometimes my hard lot to do, I look with the fascinated gaze of a bird in the neighborhood of a magnetic serpent, to watch clerks doing up bundles. How the paper falls into just the right creases! how deftly they turn it over, and tuck it under, and tie it up, and then throw it down on the counter, as if they had done the most common-place thing in the world, instead of a deed which might—and, faith, does—task the ingenuity of "angels!" It is perfectly astonishing! It repays me for all my botheration in matching this color and deciding on that, in hearing them call a piece of tape "a chaste article," and for sitting on those revolving stools fastened down so near the counter, that it takes a peculiarly constructed shopper to stay on one of them.
Thirdly—I might allude to the fact that women cannot carry an umbrella; or rather to the very peculiar manner in which they perform that duty; but I won't. I scorn to turn traitor to a sex who, whatever may be their faults,—are always loyal to each other.—So I shall not say, as I might otherwise have said, that when they unfurl the parachute alluded to, they put it right down over their noses,—take the middle of the sidewalk, raking off men's hats and woman's bonnets, as they go, and walking right into the breakfast of some unfortunate wight, with that total disregard of the consequent gasp, which to be understood must be felt, as the offender cocks up one corner of the parachute, and looks defiantly at the victim who has had the effrontery to come into the world and hazard the whalebone and handle of her "umberil!" No, I won't speak of anything of the kind; besides, has not a celebrated writer remarked, that when dear "woman is cross, it is only because she is sick?" Let us hope he is right. We all know that is not the cause of a MAN'S crossness. Give him his favorite dish, and you may dine off him afterward—if you want to.
Amiable creatures are the majority of women—to each other; charitable—above all things charitable! Always ready to acknowledge each other's beauty, or grace, or talent. Never sneer down a sister woman, or pay her a patronizing compliment with the finale of the inevitable—"but." Never run the cool, impertinent eye of calculation over her dress, noting the cost of each article, and summing up the amount in a contemptuous toss, whether it amounts to fifty cents or five hundred dollars, more likely when it is the latter! Never say to a gentleman who praises a lady, what a pity she squints! Never say of an authoress, oh yes—she has talent, but I prefer the domestic virtues; as if a combination of the two were necessarily impossible, or as if the speaker had the personal knowledge which qualified her to pronounce on that individual case.
Well-bred, too, are women to sister woman.—Never discuss the color of her hair, or the style of its arrangement, her smile, her gait, so that she can hear every word of it. Never take it for granted that she is making a dead-set at a man, to whom she is only replying—"Very well, I thank you, sir." Never sit in church and stare her out of countenance, while mentally taking her measure, or nudge some one to look at her, while recapitulating within ear-shot all the contemptible gossip which weak-minded, empty-headed women are so fond of retailing.
Now just let a dear woman visit you. Don't you know that her eyes are peering into every corner and crevice of your house all the while she is "dear"-ing and "sweet"-ing you? Don't you know that her lynx eyes are on the carpet for possible spots, or mismatched roses? Don't she touch her fingers to the furniture for stray particles of dust? Don't she hold her tumblers up to the light, and examine microscopically the quality of your table-cloths and napkins, and improvise an errand into your kitchen to inspect your culinary arrangements, to the infinite disgust of Bridget? Don't she follow you like a spectre all over the house, till you are as nervous as a cat in a cupboard? Don't she sit down opposite you for dreary hours, with folded hands, and that horse-leech—"now-talk-to-me" air—which quenches all your vitality—and sets you gaping, as inevitably as a minister's "seventeenthly."
Ah, the children! How could I forget the little children? I clasp the hand of universal woman on that; Heaven knows I don't want to misrepresent them. And after all, do I ever allow anybody to abuse them but me? Never!
There are many kinds of women. Of course I adore them all; but there is one who excites my unfeigned astonishment. I allude to the rabbit woman. She has four chins and twelve babies. She has two dresses—a loose calico wrapper for home wear, and a black silk for "meetin'." She eats tremendously, and never goes out; she calls her husband "Pa." She is quite content to roll leisurely from her rocking-chair in the nursery to the dining-room table, and thence back again, year in and year out. She knows nothing that is passing in the outside world, nor cares. She never touches a book or a newspaper, not even when she is rocking her baby to sleep, and might. She never troubles herself about Pa, so long as he don't get in her way, or sit on the twelve babies. She has a particular fondness for the child who cries the most, and won't go to sleep without a stick of candy in each fist. She has a voice like an auctioneer, and prefers cabbage to any vegetable extant.
"Pa" is devoted to her, i. e., he calls her My dear, and as soon as he enters the house, before hanging up his hat, kisses all the twelve children immediately, whether dirty or clean, and inquires tenderly after her health: keeps her stupid on a full diet, and flirts desperately, at a safe distance, behind her back.
Secondly, there is the prim woman, with her mouth always in a prepared state to whistle; who crosses over if she sees a man coming, and tosses up the end of her shawl when she sits down, lest she should crease it; who keeps her parasol in several layers of tissue-paper when not on duty: puts her two shoes on the window-sill "to air" every night, and suggests more indelicacy by constantly running away from it, then she could ever find by the most zealous search.
Thirdly, there is your butterfly woman, who, provided her wings are gay and gauzy, is not particular where she alights. Who cannot exist out of the sunbeams, and dreads a rainy day like an old gown. Who values her male acquaintance according to their capabilities for trotting her to balls, operas and parties, and giving her rings and bouquets. Who spoils all the good looks she has, trying to make herself "look better," and turns into a very ordinary caterpillar after marriage.
Fourthly, there is your library woman, steeped in folios; steeped in languages, both living and dead; steeped in ologies, steeped in politics; who walks round a baby as if it were a rattle-snake, and if she was born with a heart, never has found it out.
Fifthly, there is your female viper—your cat—your hyena. All claws, nails and tongue. Wiry, bloodless, snappy, narrow, vindictive; lapping up your life-blood with her slanders, and clawing out your warm, palpitating heart. Out on her!
Sixthly, there is your woman—pretty or plain, it matters not; lady-like by nature; intelligent, but not pedantic; modest, yet not prudish; strong-hearted, but not "strong-minded" (as that term is at present perverted); no "scholar," and yet well read; no butterfly, and yet bright and gay. Merry without noise, silent without stupidity, religious without fanaticism, capable of an opinion, and yet able to hold her tongue. If married, not of necessity sinking into a mere machine; if unmarried, occupying herself with other things than husband-hunting. Liking books, yet not despising needles and brooms; genial, unaffected, good-natured; with an active brain, and a live heart under lock and key. God bless her! wherever she is, for she redeems all the rest.
Do you suppose that the woman ever lived who would prefer single to married life had she ever met with a man whom she could really love? I have seen cold, intellectual women, apparently self-poised and self-sustained, gliding like the moon on their solitary path alone, diffusing light, perhaps, but no warmth; to the superficial observer looking as carelessly down upon joy as upon sorrow; but no power on earth could persuade me, that beneath that smooth ice there smouldered no volcano; no reasoning persuade me that those fingers would not rather have been twisting a baby's soft curls, than turning the leaves of musty folios; no negative shake of the head, or forced laugh, prevent my eyes from following with sorrowful looks the woman who was trying to make herself believe such a lie. Let her pile her books shelf upon shelf, and scribble till her pen, ink, paper, thoughts, eyes and candle give out;—and then let her turn round and face her woman's heart if she dare! I defy her to stop long enough to listen one half hour to its pleadings. I defy her to sit down in the still moonlight and look on, while old memories in mournful procession defile before her soul's mirror, without a smothered cry of anguish. I defy her to listen to the brook's ripple, the whispered leaf-music, or to look at the soft clouds, the quiet stars, the blossoming flowers, the little pairing birds as they build their nests—and above all, upon a mother with her babe's arms about her neck—without turning soul-sick away. She is not a woman if she can do otherwise. She is not a woman if she can be satisfied with clasping her own arms over a waist which belongs to nobody but herself. I declare her to be a machine—a stick—and carved in straight instead of undulating lines; she's an icicle—an ossification—a petrifaction—an abortion—a monster—let her keep her stony eyes and cold fingers off me; she has no place in this living, breathing, panting, loving world. Out upon her for a walking mummy—leave her to her hieroglyphics, which are beyond my understanding.
Pshaw—there are no such women; they are only making the best of what they can't help; they are eating their own hearts and make no sign dying. They ought all to be wives and mothers. Cats, poodle-dogs, parrots—plants, canaries and vestry meetings—are nothing to it. No woman ever has the faintest glimpse into heaven till she has nursed her own baby; in fact, I half doubt if she has earned a right to go there till she has legitimately had one.
Now were I an old maid—had no man endowed me with the names of wife and mother, I would not go round the world whining about it, either in prose or verse, any more than I would affect a stoicism, transparent to every beholder; I would just adopt the first fat baby I could find, though I had to work my fingers to the bone to keep its little mouth filled. I would have some motive to live—something to work for—something, in flesh and blood, which I could call my own:—some little live, warm thing to put my cheek against when my heart ached. Unprotected!—"A little child" with its pure presence, should be my protection. I wouldn't dry up and blow off like a useless leaf, with the warm, fragrant sunshine and blue sky about me, and my heart beating against my breast like a trip-hammer. My little room shouldn't be cheerless and voiceless. I wouldn't die till some little voice had called me "mother," though my blood did not flow in its rosy veins. I would have something to make sunshine in my heart and home; my nature shouldn't be like a tree growing close to a stone wall, only one half of which had a chance to develop, only one half of which caught the air and light and sunshine—no, I would tear myself up by the roots, and turn round and replant myself. Some bird should come, make its home with me, and sing for me; else what use were my sheltering leaves? Better the lightning should strike me, or the woodman's axe cut me down.
Men who have any physical defect, are apt to imagine that it will forever be a barrier between them and woman's love. There never was a greater mistake than this, as has been proved again and again in love's history. Not a hundred years since, nor a hundred miles distant, we heard of a young girl who had become strongly attached to a young man who was blind in one eye; and for that very reason! He was sensitive about his infirmity to that degree, that he shrank from general society, particularly that of ladies, whose presence seemed to make him morbidly miserable; so much had he exaggerated what he was quite unaware would call forth sympathy, instead of ridicule, from any true woman. The young girl, of whom we speak, knowing what we have related about him, though personally a stranger to the young man, had insensibly, through her pity, begun to love, and was then earnestly seeking some way in which, without compromising her modesty, she could encourage his notice of her. One thing you may always be sure of. No woman is in love with a man whom she freely praises, and of whom she oftenest speaks; but if there is one whom she never names, if she start and blush when others name him, if she can find no voice to answer the most common-place question he addresses her, if she avoid him, and will have none of him, if she pettishly find fault with him when he is commended to her notice by others, look sharp, for that is the man.